Dorothy Porter vs. Lyn Hejinian

So when it comes down to it, which is easier to read? Language poetry or a verse novel? You can find my explanation of what language poetry is here. A verse novel is basically a novel written in a series of verses, or poems, that have metrical composition. Which is “opposed to prose which uses grammatical units like sentences and paragraphs.”

Lyn Hejinian wrote in prose poetry. A critic said “crucial to understanding Hejinian's work is the realization that it cultivates, even requires, an act of resistant reading.” The less you try to read her work, the more you get out of it. That’s a bit confusing. In my previous blog entry about Hejinian, there is also information about how I read My Life, her most famous work.

An Australian author, Dorothy Porter, is famous for her verse novel. One example of this is The Monkey’s Mask, which is a thriller about a lesbian detective who wants to solve the case of who killed Mickey, a university student who loves poetry. Porter follows Jill, who is working on the case, but finds herself distracted and romantically involved with one of Mickey’s professors.

Even though Porter deviated from the standard prose approach to writing, I found her work understandable and easy to follow. Though the poems look much different on page than blocks of prose, I quickly forgot I was reading poems and was able to pick up the story line. Though I was reading short, usually less than a page long, poems, the story line was clear and sequential. This is quite the opposite of Hejinian, who often times leads her audience in circles with repetition and a hard to find plot.

I found Porter’s work to be easier to understand at first read, but both works to be equally enjoyable and rewarding, even if I had to work harder at reading Hejinian’s work to read it how she would want me to.

Language Poetry

This weekend I had to read one of the most confusing books I have encountered: My Life, by Lyn Hejinian. Not only did I have to read it, I had to understand it well enough to present it to my class. Understanding it was impossible at first glance because Hejinian seems to repeat herself and made me go in circles. When I got really frustrated with the book, I turned to Google to figure out what was going on.

It turns out, Hejinian is part of a movement called “language poetry.” A big part of language poetry is that the author’s presence is removed from the text. This means that what we get out of the writing is almost entirely up to us. She wrote what she wanted to, but there is no deeper meaning that the whole audience is supposed to magically “get.” Instead, each audience member will get what they want out of the piece and relate it to their life as they see fit. How versatile!

It was difficult to read this book because I try to figure out the meaning of most of what I read. Once I was able to shake that feeling, the book became much more enjoyable. Instead of searching for meaning, I let the meaning come when I would read a certain sentence or paragraph that had relevance to my life.

Skip to about 1:45 to see what you get out of Hejinian's writing here.